Movie Thoughts: Boys Don’t Cry (Ten Years Later)

Boys Don’t Cry is an excellent movie. It seems like it was just yesterday I watched it, feeling stunned by the revelation from the closing credits that the movie was based on events in the life of an actual person named Teena Brandon.

It’s actually the first movie that made me cry, and that was while I wasn’t even watching it. No, wait a minute. Father of the Bride was the first movie I got misty on, followed by Boys Don’t Cry, and then Black Hawk Down.

Boys Don’t Cry messed me up, though, meaning it “stuck” with me, was constantly present in the back of my mind providing thoughts for consideration. I think it had such an impact on me as a viewer because I have a soft spot for “love stories,” and even more than that, I’m deeply intrigued by what a “love story” is. Movies that don’t make assumptions about the nature of pursuing love, and assert rather than absorb ideas about that pursuit, are movies that affect me the most.

I’m reminded of a scene from Boys Don’t Cry in which the protagonist tries to explain to someone a dilemma she feels she needs to be privy to, and stating, at one point, “it’s complicated.” That statement, to me, stands as a symbolic comment on not so much the nature of her perceived condition, but rather the nature of attempting to fulfill the concept of love. It is complicated, involved, ambiguous, uncertain. What does it entail? Is it a continuous pursuit? It is ever really fulfilled? Can the journey be completed?